Fallout: New Vegas Dead Money reviews round-up #2

grayx said:
... it could be, as some above have said, actually tediously hard. Illogically, for no good reason annoyingly probability-based hard. The worst kind of hard.

Yes very true I actually felt the challenges were there for no other reason than to cover up the fact that they rushed the DLC or to make you understand why Elijah was there. The lines of Elijah say watch out for the speakers to stop if you hear it beep and look around.

My thought was piece of cake only until I ran into the first one and some kind hearted individual thought to hide it under a desk where I could not see nor get close enough to see the damn thing. My solution was lob a grenade in the room voila, success so fast forward into the casino and im out of grenades, most of the speakers are indestructible, and now I have to find holo-emiiters that have the ability to fry my already weakened character. :shock:

I could deal with those if they had instituted a pointing feature so you could at least know where to look for the speaker instead of running out searching dying reload repeat. The main thing is the speakers and holograms were bought from nowhere a main character that had so much potential was seemingly squandered and on top of that there was no considerably good weapons or armor around to make you understand "oh that's why it was that hard... I got the Power suit of god". I just hope the others are better and actually, you know challenge you instead of making you participate in the 360 controller hurl event. :lol:
 
HyperionOmega said:
The main thing is the speakers and holograms were bought from nowhere a main character that had so much potential was seemingly squandered and on top of that there was no considerably good weapons or armor around to make you understand "oh that's why it was that hard... I got the Power suit of god". I just hope the others are better and actually, you know challenge you instead of making you participate in the 360 controller hurl event. :lol:

Who and what exactly do you mean by that?

The other parts. I felt opposite but that probably comes down to my own experience with the DLC.
 
Well the main character that was squandered is probably just my sense of wanting Elijah to be part of some bigger story arc. Especially since the Mojave BoS were so maimed due to his actions, it seems like a bit of a throw away to say[spoiler:b6df4f0efc] he went to a casino to find holo-weapons then died or got trapped (depending on what you did)[/spoiler:b6df4f0efc] I just felt a good story about some sort of reconciliation or the sparks of a new NCR-BoS war could have been kindled here.

The speaker and Hologram reference is that in the main game there is nothing that replicates that type of deadly annoyance. The cloud had a precedence in radiation you knew how to react the holograms were put in for shits and giggles as was the speakers it seem. In other words my feeling is that they just started making up hurtles for you to jump over. Again just my opinion.
 
HyperionOmega said:
Well the main character that was squandered is probably just my sense of wanting Elijah to be part of some bigger story arc. Especially since the Mojave BoS were so maimed due to his actions, it seems like a bit of a throw away to say[spoiler:721fc6e8d2] he went to a casino to find holo-weapons then died or got trapped (depending on what you did)[/spoiler:721fc6e8d2] I just felt a good story about some sort of reconciliation or the sparks of a new NCR-BoS war could have been kindled here.

The speaker and Hologram reference is that in the main game there is nothing that replicates that type of deadly annoyance. The cloud had a precedence in radiation you knew how to react the holograms were put in for shits and giggles as was the speakers it seem. In other words my feeling is that they just started making up hurtles for you to jump over. Again just my opinion.

So because they aren't connected to the maingame from a pure gameplay standpoint they are just giggely? oO

Nah, ok can accept your viewpoint. Don't really see what influence Elijah could have had on this though. Already in the main game he was portrayed as a mad man who left his companions. Him having any influence at that point regarding the NCR...
 
Little Robot said:
C2B said:
Wait, aren't these examples more of a simple writing style rather than a bad one.

Metroid Games are usually very simple written, not too bad/obnoxious. A really bad written (but story focused) Metroid Game is Other M. And it got a lot of flak for it- Hate even.

I agree. Simple writing is not necessarily bad writing-- even an absence of writing is not necessarily "bad." Games that are gameplay-focused are allowed to stick writing in the back seat, so can get away with a little bit of cheesiness. However, games like Fallout 3, which focus largely on story and writing, don't have as much of a free pass because there's literally no way to avoid the bad writing.

Well, simple can be bad, especially if you toss around that classification on issues of originality (as simple tends to touch upon archetypal elements of Western narrative done to death, "the hero's journey," etc).

That aside, I'd disagree that Fallout 3 was really about the writing or story. Fallout 3 was about emergent experience, and I feel that was a conscious decision of the developers. The story was a backdrop to exploration and the emergence of one's own narrative in the wasteland (this can be said of Oblivion, Morrowind and Daggerfall as well). However, I will readily agree that Fallout, as a series pioneered by Interplay, has traditionally been about story over emergence (and I believe the expectations we had of Bethesda continuing this are the root of our unhappiness with the end result).

I do get your point though, Metroid or Limbo at least had a consistent world that made sense within the confines of their reality. Fallout 3 lacked sense at nearly every turn (where did settlements get food? Power? Defense? etc). I just don't feel that was intended to be where the "game" resided in Bethesda's head.

At the end of the day, however, I'm fine with the elevation of emergent gameplay over writing or a smartly scripted narrative. Even Chris Avellone has said that he feels emergent moments matter more to players (mainly due to them being "owned" by the players moreso than scripted moments). What I dislike about Bethesda's approach is I feel Todd Howard (or whomever) myopically fixate on the warrior/knight/Rambo-esque approach without giving a fair shake to more experimental character builds (e.g. I tried role playing a cringing cowardly thief in Oblivion and quickly discovered it was anticipated I'd be a warrior, i.e. Kvatch). Fallout 3, for whatever positives I could say, certainly seemed tuned to appeal first to the Ritalin popping, Counter Strike mentality over the non-combat, diplomatic approach.. but a large part was the emphasis on the solo play Bethesda loves so much (i.e. Fallout 2 would probably have demanded a similarly combat-centric approach if you chose to solo the game, due more to forced combat bottlenecks ).
 
sampson70 said:
Gaddes said:
From what I can gather is the writing and story are good, but "it's too hard bwaaa!". I played it on my brother's 360 and found it to be pretty easy even on hardcore.
Yeah right!! :roll:

No, it's very easy. Just because the vast majority of reviewers apparently suck at it doesn't mean everyone sucks at it or finds it hard. I just played cautiously and had no problems.
 
Gaddes said:
sampson70 said:
Gaddes said:
From what I can gather is the writing and story are good, but "it's too hard bwaaa!". I played it on my brother's 360 and found it to be pretty easy even on hardcore.
Yeah right!! :roll:

No, it's very easy. Just because the vast majority of reviewers apparently suck at it doesn't mean everyone sucks at it or finds it hard. I just played cautiously and had no problems.

Try to play it on Hardcore/Very Hard.
 
C2B said:
Try to play it on Hardcore/Very Hard.

The game is still piss easy, however. I have yet to load into the DLC so I'm speaking generally (and with an implicit reference to Fallout 2) but I'm lvl 12 with combat skills below 20 and doing just fine (solo or otherwise). I almost never wear armor anymore either.

VATS is a huge cheat mode.
 
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